Cities and Decolonization: Anti-colonial Struggles, Urban Protest, and Global Solidarities in the Twentieth Century
Workshop | 19.–20. März 2026 | University of Oxford, Wadham College, UK
Programm:
Day 1: 19 March 2026
10.00 Registration
10.30–11.00 Welcoming Remarks and Introduction
Session 1 ACTORS I: Gendered Politics of Urban Space in Colonial Africa
Chair: John Darwin (University of Oxford)
11.00–12.30 Sara Hussein (UCLA)
Anticolonial Solidarity from Cairo to Conakry: Afro-Asian Sisters Against Empire
Marius Kothor (Harvard University)
Nana Benz: Togolese Women Merchants and the Spatial Politics of Decolonization
Jennifer Hart (Virgina Tech)
Disturbances in the Gold Coast: Market Women, Global Trade, and the Politics of Decolonization in Post-War Accra
12.30–13.30 Lunch
Session 2 ACTORS II: Supporting, Surveilling, and Controlling Anti-Colonial Actors in Eurasian Cities
Chair: NN
13.30–15.30 Maria Ketzmerick-Calandrino (ZMO Berlin)
Postcolonial Spaces and Postsocialist Realities: Afro-Asian Mobility, and the Stasi in the Divided City of Berlin
Joseph Ben Prestel (Free University of Berlin)
Migration, Anti-Imperialism, and a Gap in the Wall: How Berlin Turned into a Centre of Palestinian Politics (1960s–80s)
Malika Zehni (IHR London)
Roads to Tashkent: Infrastructures of Anticolonial Mobility (1920–60)
15.30–16.00 Coffee/Tea Break
Session 3 TENSIONS I: Breeding Grounds of Rebellion: Neighbourhoods, Protests and Violence
Chair: NN
16.30–17.30 Chris Saunders (University of Cape Town)
Windhoek as a Hub of Decolonisation
Sophie-Jung Kim (University of Vienna)
Shanghai and Anticolonial Globalities: An Alternative History of the Korean Manse Movement
Wallace Teska (University of Cambridge)
“Morts pour le Droit”: Law, Violence, and Anticolonial Protest in Daloa, Côte d’Ivoire, 1945–1950
Keynote Lecture
17.45–18.45 Su Lin Lewis (University of Bristol)
Anti-Colonialism, Authoritarianism, and the Left in the Decolonising City
19.15 Dinner
Day 2: 20 March 2026
Session 4 TENSIONS II: Decolonial Dilemmas: Institutional Contradictions and Fractured Solidarities
Chair: Norman Aselmeyer (University of Oxford)
9.00–10.30 Yasmina Martin (UC Riverside)
Anti-Apartheid Protest and Frustrated Solidarities in 1960s Dar es Salaam
Stephen Legg (University of Nottingham)
Spaces of Global Urban Historical Anticolonialism: Delhi’s Comparative Governmentalities
Natalya Benkhaled-Vince (University of Oxford)
A Colonial University in a Decolonised City? The University of Algiers and the Early Years of Algerian Independence
10.30–11.00 Coffee/Tea Break
Session 5 VENUES I: Connecting Cities: Strategies, Logistics, and Rivalries across Urban Contexts
Chair: Jennifer Altehenger (University of Oxford)
11.00–12.30 Jocelyn Alexander (University of Oxford)
Making and Moving a Liberation Army in Zambian Cities: Zimbabwean Youth in the 1960s
Immanuel Harisch (University of Vienna)
Trade Unionists in Africa’s “Hubs of Decolonization”: An Entangled Perspective from Léopoldville, Dar es Salaam and Lusaka (1960–1968)
Clarence Chongo (University of Zambia)
A “Hub of Decolonisation”: Lusaka, Liberation Movements and the Struggle for Black Majority Rule in Southern Africa, c.1960s–
1980
12.30–13.30 Lunch
Session 6 VENUES II: Urban Politics: Re/Imagining the City and the Nation
Chair: NN
13.30–15.00 Nora Lafi (University of Bayreuth)
War, De/Re/Colonization and Resistance: The Civic Sphere in Ghadames, Libya (1943–1953)
David M. Anderson (University of Warwick)
Forging the Nation: African Urban Politics in Nairobi, 1956–1966
Koni Benson (University of the Western Cape)
Reconfiguring Cape Town: Gender, Land, Movements, History
15.00–15.30 Coffee/Tea Break
Session 7 VENUES III: Interfaces: The Urban and the Hinterland
Chair: Alexander Sedlmaier (Bangor University)
15.30–16.30 Salma Abouelhossein (Harvard University)
The Hinterland Question of Decolonization: Rethinking City-Country Relations in Egypt’s Sugar Belt (1919–1939)
Maxwell Kwesi Asabere (West Virginia University)
Controlling the Cocoa Crisis: Colonial Interventions, Policies, and Urban Reactions to Cocoa Pests and Diseases in the Gold Coast
(Ghana), 1930–1957
Final Discussion Cities and Decolonization in the Twentieth Century
16.30–17.30 Roundtable
Eric Burton (chair)
Reem Abou-El-Fadl (SOAS)
Hilary Sapire (Birkbeck)
Organisation:
Norman Aselmeyer (University of Oxford)
Eric Burton (Universität Innsbruck)
gemeinsam mit:
Kontakt:
Assoz.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Eric Burton
Institut für Zeitgeschichte
Universität Innsbruck
Innrain 52d, 6020 Innsbruck